[Doot doot doo, feel free to manipulate any NPCs here. ^_^]
Heh, so she was right yet again! Man, if this kept happening, she'd just have to start keeping score. So far, she had two points and Nexus had...er, maybe it was best not to think of that, actually. Yeah. Score-keeping might be a bad idea. She'd just take her victories and be happy with them. She did have to snort, though, at his comment. "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" But she knew it for banter, and she stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm young and sharp minded, what can I say! As opposed to, y'know, a senile old one-thousand year old guy." She winked at him, somehow managing to be calm and even a little cheerful now--somehow, this kind of banter just helped to calm her more, maybe because it just downplayed the severity of the situation. But she did trust what he said. They'd get out of this.
She failed to notice how he never said "we".
Niamh stared at Nexus after her answered her question, eyebrows arching as she gaped at him. "Holy...! A thousand?" she repeated quietly, her voice a mixture of bemusement and amusement, since she wasn't quite sure which emotion to settle on. A thousand times at least? And he was, what, some amount of centuries over a thousand years old? Yeah, she was already doing the math. She looked back out ahead of her and shook her head, blinking rapidly. "So...that means you've done this at least once a year. Light, I don't know whether to find that comforting or--" That was when Nexus stopped and turned to face her, and she paused as well, cutting off her tangent just like that.
For a moment she was tense, thinking he'd heard or smelled something. But then he just went on ahead and removed his hat and set it on her head, while she glanced up at him in confusion.
That confusion was soon cleared up as he started to explain, his hand resting on her shoulder though this time she didn't react to it like before. Instead, her eyes just grew larger. Wait! He was leaving her? Niamh opened her mouth, wanting to ask what he was doing or where he was going and any number of other questions, but he kept talking, and anything she'd been about to say died on her tongue when he produced the whip. Despite herself, Niamh just about dropped it when he gave it to her, though she made sure to grip it firmly even if she did shoot Nexus a sour look. A whip. Why a whip of all things? Her sour expression faded, however, when he explained what it could do, and when she finally looked at it and noticed that it seemed to have been made of fire, her element.
Okay...maybe it wasn't that bad. Except of course for the fact that she'd never used a whip before (nor had any desire to!) but she could figure it out! Didn't seem that hard, just...crack it or wave it around. "Alright, got it, but Nexus, where're you--oi. Alright...see ya..." she sighed, seeing as he was already walking off, leaving her. "You better be careful," she added in a low mumble as she stared down at the whip, even though she knew he probably couldn't hear her.
Which was a good thing. She wasn't worried about him, after all! Psha, no way. She just needed him to survive, that was all! Really.
After that, she wasted no time in counting, knowing he was up to something. He wouldn't ditch her, not when he'd gone through so much, uh, trouble to get her in the first place. Splitting up was probably a good idea. She just hoped he wasn't doing anything stupid and life-threatening...
Twenty one thousand, twenty-one one thousand...
Eyes and ears alert as she waited, she leaned back against the alley wall and quickly decided to put Nexus' hat to some use. She stuck the handle of the whip between her teeth and reached up so she could tuck her hair under the fedora, then tipped it down and forward a little to try and hide her face with the brim. Eh. That probably wouldn't do much, come to think of it. Her clothes--wait, she was wearing new clothes, wasn't she? Great, maybe if she did run into anyone she could just slip on by! The whip might draw attention, but other than that...okay, yeah, this would be fine. Just go through the alleys, run to the forest. She didn't know the way, but she was sure she could figure it out. If she just kept following these pathways then it they should eventually lead out. They had to end somewhere.
Too bad she didn't know about the man who had seen her earlier at the inn, the man who would have likely also given out details of her updated attire. Nexus had never told her about that; she had just figured he had been able to smell them close by.
The sounds of shouts and screams in the distance made her blood go cold, and even though she had only been up to eighty-three, she figured it couldn't hurt to go seventeen seconds early! In a second she had pushed off from the wall and begun to jog through the alley, holding the whip in a white-knuckled grip and reaching up every now and then to make sure the hat didn't fall off--har har, kinda like the game she and Nexus had played. Speaking of...
You better not get hurt, you psycho... she thought, wincing when the sounds of commotion seemed to increase. That...didn't sound good. But she couldn't stop and go back, and whatever it was he was doing, Nexus had experience in doing it, right? Over a thousand years of experience. It would be fine. Reaching the end of one alley and rounding around a corner, she wound up behind a cluster of buildings and paused for a moment to orient herself. Good, good...the alley systems weren't much different from Solis. Glancing skyward briefly, she took a deep breath and continued heading East. That had been the way Nexus had been leading her, so she stuck to it. Thank Goddess she had a good sense of direction. Confident that she was almost out of this, she picked up her pace.
Shit! Only to skid to a hasty stop when two figures entered the alley then from the other end, two figures she immedietely recognized. One a man with hair even lighter than Niamh's, a bleached white, the other an older woman with red hair, both unmistakingly Solisi with their light skin. Jahi and Ket. Both friends of hers.
Both froze just as surely as she did. Niamh ducked her head to shield her face and hoped beyond hope that they hadn't recognized her. She had changed her clothes. They shouldn't be able to recognize her--
"Niamh!" Niamh jerked. Oh shit. "Niamh, thank the Light! You're not hurt are you? If that fucker hurt you..." It was Ket, the red-haired woman, that was speaking as she approached her, and Niamh could only watch as she and Jahi closed the distance, her hand tightening on the whip. Oh Goddess. She had to use it. She had to use it now. These were her friends, but they would kill her if they knew...if they knew.
Oh no...
She had been so sure of her decision, but now as she saw them, her friends, her adopted family, lines of actual concern etched into their faces...once again she began to waver in her decision, knowing good and well that this was it. She could go back to her old life if she wanted and take her chances. Or...or she would have to hurt them, and then everyone would later learn from them that she had become a heretic and a traitor, and the news would reach her family and friends back home. It would officially be the end of her old life and nothing would change that. Light...tt was so easy to decide to leave and start anew when she wasn't actually looking at her loved ones. It was so easy to fight when you weren't fighting people you cared about. It was so easy when the consequences and the choices were still all abstract and not actually standing right in front of her.
Niamh felt strangely distant as Ket took her by the shoulders and gave her a once over, checking for injuries--and doing a double-take when she saw the fiery whip, since Niamh was known for being weak in her gifts--as Jahi stood over them both like a sentry. The woman was a healer, not a fighter; that was why Jahi was with her. But strange whip or not, Ket wasn't concerned with that for now.
"Are you injured, Niamh? Niamh...? Hey!" She snapped her fingers and Niamh jolted and looked at her. "Fuck...he hurt you, didn't he?" Ket asked, obviously taking Niamh's silence and stiffness as evidence of that, when the truth was that Niamh was just torn. No...she wasn't torn anymore, actually. "Come on...you're going to be safe now, that bastard's being taken care of now. You're going to be okay...let's go, we'll talk when we're out of here. Jahi, let the others know we found her." She laid her hand on Niamh's arm, and Jahi nodded and turned to head off to do just that.
Without even thinking, Niamh abruptly twisted and slammed the heel of her palm into Ket's nose before following through with a swift elbow blow to her gut, and the poor bloodied healer went down with a thud. Jahi spun around then in shock and started for her, and Niamh drew her arm back and cracked the whip--only to watch the damned fireball fly off course, her aim off. Gah! Not her fault! A staff was one thing but a whip was another! Acting fast, she waved the whip instead, but with a sharp motion of his hand, Jahi dispelled the fire before it even reached him, and then he was on her before she could do much else but draw her arm back to strike him with the whip itself.
He dodged expertly and grabbed her wrist, giving it a sharp twist so that she yelped and dropped the whip. "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you possessed?" he demanded, a mixture of anger and exasperated concern in his voice as he roughly shoved her back against the alley wall, the air leaving her as her back smacked it and her head followed, and for a moment she saw spots of light. "What'd that guy do to you?"
But Niamh wasn't through. Disarmed, she began to struggle wildly, and he cursed loudly when she brought the heel of her boot down hard on the toes of his, knowing good and well how easy it was to break the bones there. She used that small distraction to thrash one arm free and grab for her dagger, which began to glow, and she was more than ready to use it, not to kill but to injure. And she would have, too, if he also wasn't quick enough grab that wrist, though she continued to kick and thrash in his grip, even biting him at one point. Thank Goddess they were...friends. That bought her some time as he struggled to figure out a way to subdue her without injuring her too much, clearly thinking she'd lost it. Maybe she had.
And Niamh hated every second of it, but she knew she had to do this--both of them had to be incapacitated, otherwise the whole escape plan just wouldn't work; they'd know where she and Nexus went. Thank Goddess she'd pretty much stopped thinking at this point and was just acting.
